The secret decision to kill San Onofre nuke

On July 18, just 42 days after announcing the retirement of the San Onofre nuclear power plant, its owners drove a stake through its heart, making sure it never works again.

Playing the role of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was Ted Craver, the chief executive of Edison International, which owns about 80 percent of the plant. He now holds the land speed record for killing a nuke.

Next executives will work up the tab for consumers, which may also set a record — and rush to build a slew of profitable replacement infrastructure.

After workers removed fuel from the nuclear reactors this month, Edison sent a letter to federal regulators that essentially terminated its operating license. No U.S. nuclear plant has ever restarted after giving up its license.

Eventually, state regulators will decide who pays for San Onofre, which was expected to produce power for 1.4 million homes until at least 2022, along with the cost to replace its electricity.

But in a state where changes to utility tree trimming require years of public hearings, the public is completely in the dark on key details about the demise of a giant nuke.

Utility executives and regulators won’t say how high the bill to consumers might eventually soar — along with profits for Edison and its 20 percent partner, San Diego Gas & Electric Co.

Before Craver decided to scrap San Onofre, he didn’t bother to give customers or regulators a basic cost-benefit analysis. Something like this: “Our biggest power plant is broken. It will cost X and take X years to fix. But scrapping it will cost X, plus X to build replacement plants.

“Anti-nuclear groups will fight any fix. So I’ve decided to scrap it and send you the bill, which will be X.”

Please note the last sentence of the above briefing, which didn’t happen.

Under California’s system of regulating monopoly utilities, the cost for anything a utility builds to deliver power goes onto consumer bills — along with a profit of around 10 percent a year.

My rough estimate, which is undoubtedly low because it assumes regulators will side with consumers, suggests that consumers face a minimum of $13.6 billion in costs arising from the defunct nuke — including $4.5 billion in potential new utility profits over 25 years.

In June, I estimated total costs of $8.4 billion; the news keeps getting worse for consumers.

But before we crunch the numbers, let’s reflect on the extraordinary, nonpublic process we’ve just witnessed with the decision to kill this giant nuke.

In the wake of San Diego’s historic wildfires, SDG&E in 2007 asked the Public Utilities Commission for permission to trim trees 48 inches away from power lines instead of 18 inches. Approval required public hearings and two years.

Now compare this to Craver’s decision to pull the plug on San Onofre, which he announced on June 7 and completed in 42 days — without consulting the PUC.

To be fair, Craver’s team had 18 months to think about it, after a small radiation leak exposed flaws in the nuke’s steam generators.